Nokia to Close Nokia Mosh-to be included in Nokia Ovi

In today's online Webinar for mobile application publishers, Bill Perry from Nokia confirmed that they would be discontinuing Nokia Mosh and that it, together with Nokia Widsets, would be consolidated into one offering on Nokia Ovi.

Mosh has had a chequered history, being a somewhat misunderstood child of Nokia and accused of harbouring a mixed bag of (low value) applications.

The (re) launch of Ovi is on a substantial scale and is scheduled for May 2009.

It will provide a market for developers to reach over 100m Nokia customers worldwide but it comes with some limitations-small mobile developers will find the listing costs prohibitive (at over $500 a pop, per application, per language supported), given that Nokia will make Java/Symbian certification and validation mandatory.

Pasi Manninen from Ovi commented that Flash and WRT do not require signing, though this will be of little relevance outside of Asia.